Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Indicted, States: “I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary”

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Quote US DA re Editors, AtR p1, Nov 30, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 1, 1912
Terre Haute, Indiana – Debs Responds to Indictment by Federal Grand Jury

From the Richmond Evening Item (Indiana) of November 26, 1912:

DEBS DECLARES WORLD WOULD
STAND AGHAST
———-

IF WHOLE TRUTH WERE DISCLOSED ABOUT
CONDITIONS AT LEAVENWORTH PRISON.
———-

(By the Associated Press.)

Terre Haute, Ind., Nov. 26.-Eugene V. Debs, indicted by the federal grand jury at Girard, Kas., Saturday, appeared at his home Monday, refuting the report that he had started for Ft. Scott, Kas., on hearing of the indictment. In speaking of the case, Debs said:

These indictments are based on an infamous lie. There was never any attempt on the part of the officers of The Appeal to Reason to induce any witness to leave anywhere. I have recently been the candidate of the working classes for the presidency. I suppose I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary. Were the whole truth told about conditions in the Ft. Leavenworth prison, the world would stand agast.

[Emphasis added.]

From The Coming Nation of November 30, 1912:

AN INCREDIBLE STORY

By A. M. Simons

THAT within two weeks after receiving the votes of almost a million citizens for the office of president of the United States, Eugene V. Debs should be indicted by federal grand jury for obstructing the orderly process of the court by alleged tampering with a witness is almost incredible…..

EVD at AtR Desk, Cmg Ntn p2, Nov 30, 1912

When the Appeal turned the light on Leavenworth penitentiary it pulled a bone away from a pack of hungry office-holding curs who sprang in hydrophobic rage upon the persons who had disturbed their foul feast. When to this was added the exposure of the corruption of the federal courts of the nation and especially of the southwest, another allied pack was started into full cry for vengeance. It was easy for these to get the backing of the great powers of capitalism, and all the branches of class government…..

Fred Warren, Cmg Ntn p2, Nov 30, 1912

In their blind baffled rage the conspirators played their last card. A servile grand jury indicted Eugene V. Debs, Fred D. Warren and J. I. Sheppard for attempted tampering with a witness in the case based upon the Leavenworth exposure…..

The object of this assault is to cripple the publications against which it is directed. Throughout this fight the Appeal has helped to carry the COMING NATION. In this desperate crisis no extra weight can be carried. Yet if the news goes out that the first effect of the assault was to compel the abandonment of the COMING NATION that will have all the effect of a victory for the enemy. They will have restricted and choked the voice of revolt by just that much. They will have strangled in youth what promises to be a powerful champion when full grown…..

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Wayland’s Last Paragraph, a Word from Fred Warren, Tribute from Kate Richards O’Hare

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Quote EVD re Death of Wayland, AtR p1, Nov 23, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 26, 1912
Girard, Kansas – Wayland’s Last Paragraph, “…no unkind words…”

From the Appeal to Reason of November 23, 1912:

JA Wayland Last Paragraph, AtR p1, Nov 23, 1912

—–

Fred Warren re AtR after Death of Wayland, Atr p1, Nov 23, 1912

———-

To a Good Soldier

[-by Kate Richards O’Hare]

J. A. Wayland, Leaves of Life p6, 17 of 289, 1912

We shed no tears of grief; grief is for the naked lives of those who have made the world no better.

We have no idle, vain, regrets; for who are we to judge, or say that he has shirked his task or left some work undone? No eyes can count the seed that he has sown, the thoughts that he has planted in a million souls now covered deep beneath the mold of ignorance which will not spring into life until the snows have heaped upon his gave and the sun of springtime comes to reawaken the sleeping world.

Sleep on our comrade; rest your weary mind and soul; sleep sweet and deep, and if in other realms the boon is granted that we may again take up our work, you will be with us and give us of your strength, your patience and your  loyalty to your fellow men. We bring no ostentatious tributes of our love; we spend not gold for flowers for your tomb, but with hearts that rejoice at your deliverance offer a comrade’s tribute to lie above your breast-the red flag of human brotherhood.

KATE RICHARD O’HARE.
St Louis. Mo.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason Comes the Sad News of the Death of Comrade J. A. Wayland in Girard, Kansas

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Quote EVD re Death of Wayland, AtR p1, Nov 23, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 20, 1912
Girard, Kansas – Comrade J. A. Wayland Has Died; His Memory Will Live On

From the Appeal to Reason of November 16, 1912:

JA Wayland Dead, AtR p1, Nov 16, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Describes the Shipping of the Special Judiciary Edition of the Appeal to Reason

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Quote EVD, Law ag Working Class, AtR p1, Apr 29, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 15, 1912
Girard, Kansas – Eugene Debs on Shipping Special Edition of the Appeal

From The Coming Nation of May 11, 1912
-April 22nd, Shipping the Special Judiciary Edition of April 27th:

AtR Judiciary Ed Apr 27, Ship Apr 22, Cmg Ntn p 14, May 11, 1912

A view of part of the great record-breaking edition of the Appeal to Reason, at the railroad station, Girard, Kansas

The photographer’s lens was not wide enough to catch all of the piles of the special Judiciary Edition of the Appeal to Reason which were delivered to one single train. The total edition was over 3,000,000.

From the Appeal to Reason of May 4, 1912:

Greed Kills Titanic etc, AtR p4, May 4, 1912

April 22, 1912, at Girard

BY EUGENE V. DEBS.

SITTING at my desk at the APPEAL office, I hear the whirl and roar of the mammoth press. The Judicial Edition is racing through it-20,000 copies an hour. “Old Chap,” the veteran pressman, is pitted against his own record.

At the rate of a quarter of a million a day it will take twelve days to turn out this marvelous edition the greatest ever issued by any paper, in any nation, since the printing art was born.

“Old Chap” and the boys are standing by the racing, roaring old leviathan to win the wager that “she will not make it” and she does not miss a throb of her swift-beating heart in all the twenty-four hours of the day and night.

All about the APPEAL today the boys and girls are tense with trial-“drinking in the breath of their own swiftness”-making the record that is to stand against the world.

There is no night in Girard this week-there is but one long day-the day of Wayland, Warren and Phifer’s defiance to Pollock, Hook and Bone-the day of the APPEAL triumphant over the criminal courts of capitalist America. 

* * *

IT is now ten-thirty in the morning. I am near the depot platform and I gaze upon a mountain raised by human hands and human hearts and human brains-in sweet and sympathetic social alliance-the like of which the eyes of man never saw before.

Piled high enough to hide the depot and extending far enough to tower like a range of mountain peaks, the APPEAL,-a thousand pouches and a million copies-is awaiting transportation. And this is but the first installment of the fabulous edition.

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Hellraisers Journal: Art Shields Reports: “Amazon Army” on the March Against Scabs in the Mines of Southeastern Kansas

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Quote Mother Jones Raising Hell, NYT p1, Oct 6, 1916—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 18, 1921
Southeastern Kansas – Art Shields Reports on the Miner’s “Amazon Army”

From the Oklahoma Leader of December 13, 1921:

Ok Ldr, p1, Dec 13, 1921

OK Ldr p1, Dec 13, 1921

PITTSBURG, Kan., Dec 13- There is joy and laughter in the coal fields of Kansas for the strikebreakers are on the run before the militant ladles of that Sunflower state.

The fun begun before daylight when the 120 men who have helped themselves to the vacant jobs in the big Jackson-Walker mine No. 17 near South Franklin began to get off the two interurban cars and to get into hot water all at once.

They say there used to be some excitement in the old Amazon days, but it was nothing to the action out there on the Kansas prairie. Seven hundred and fifty lively ladies gave the travelers the liveliest reception they had ever experienced. Young women, old women, blondes, brunettes and every kind began swarming into those wishers for unhallowed work and began ruffing their feelings.

Deputies Looked On.

In the midst of the charming host were the forces of the law, Sheriff Gould and his deputies, to see that nothing happened that ought not to happen, and all they could do was to look on while the cause of the trouble was all removed by the visitors rushing pell mell back into the cars and begging the motormen to drive on.

What could the sheriff do against such a crowd of lovely femininity, all in their best bibs and tuckers, flying the stars and strips from a dozen poles and laughing and singing? One stalwart woman wrapped her country’s banner around the sheriff and gave him three cheers, and they all joined in and gave him three cheers, and gave the inter-urban cars a salvo of hurrahs as they went on with the men who tried to break the strike for the release of Howat and Dorchy.

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Hellraisers Journal: Fred Warren, the Fighting Editor of the Appeal to Reason, Must Go to Jail for Six Months

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Quote Fred Warren, Justice Will Triumph, ISR p166, Aug 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 16, 1911
Girard, Kansas – Fred Warren, Editor of Appeal Reason, Must Go to Jail

From the International Socialist Review of January 1911:

EDITORIAL

Fred Warren Goes to Jail.

Fred Warren Fighting Editor of Appeal, ISR p427, Jan 1911

On December 30, 1905, Frank Steunenberg was killed by the explosion of a dynamite bomb at Caldwell, Idaho. Several weeks later Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners; William D. Haywood, Secretary, and George E. Pettibone, an honorary member of the organization, were kidnapped from their home in Colorado and secretly carried off to Idaho on a special train to be tried for the murder of Steunenberg. Requisition papers were issued by the Governor of Colorado on an affidavit signed by the County Attorney in Idaho, setting forth that the men were present in Idaho when the crime was committed and had fled from the state, although every one concerned knew perfectly well that they had not been in Idaho for months. The Western Federation of Miners was at that time engaged in a death struggle with the mine owners, and it is a fair inference that this kidnapping was a preconceived plan to discredit and crush this organization.

The capitalist press of the whole country united to fasten the charge of conspiracy to commit murder upon these men, while the Socialist press, with scarcely an exception, defended them. They were held for nearly a year and a half without trial, while strenuous efforts were made by both accusers and defendants to arouse public opinion on one side or the other. In this situation Fred D. Warren, editor of the Appeal to Reason at Girard, Kans., conceived the idea of giving the American people a striking object lesson. With this in view, he had postal cards printed offering a reward for the kidnapping of ex-Governor Taylor of Kentucky, who was at that time under indictment for murder in his own state and was safe in Indiana, because the Republican governor of that state refused to sign extradition papers.

This object lesson was an important factor in arousing public sentiment for the imprisoned miners, and when Haywood was finally put on trial he was acquitted; the other men were finally discharged. But the government officials and their capitalist masters did not forget the part Fred Warren played in their defeat, and an indictment was brought against him for having “sent scurrilous, defamatory and threatening matter through the mails.” After long delay he was tried and convicted by a packed jury, every member of which was a Republican. From this decision he appealed. Again long delays, and finally, after election is over, the Appellate Court has sustained the decision of the District Court, and Fred Warren must go to jail for six months. On the 21st of January, he is to begin serving his sentence.

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Hellraisers Journal: The Progressive Woman: “The Outcast” -a Poem for a “Wayward Child” by Lydia Platt Richards

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Quote Mother Jones, Great Church upon Bodies of Girls, Dnv Rck Mt Ns p2, Feb 28, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 23, 1910
“The Outcast” -a Poem for a “Wayward Child” by Lydia Platt Richards

From The Progressive Woman of July 1910:

POEM Outcast by Lidia Platt Richards, Prg Wmn p5, July 1910

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: Socialists and “The Traffic in Girl Slaves” by Josephine Conger-Kaneko

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Quote Mother Jones, Great Church upon Bodies of Girls, Dnv Rck Mt Ns p2, Feb 28, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 21, 1910
Warning the American Public of the Widespread Traffic in Women

From The Progressive Woman of July 1910:

Girl Slave, Prg Wmn Cv, July 1910———-

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Progressive Woman: Socialists and “The Traffic in Girl Slaves” by Josephine Conger-Kaneko”